


Louder

by Dispatches (orphan_account)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Community: mcsmooch, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-10
Updated: 2010-05-10
Packaged: 2017-10-09 09:39:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Dispatches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This!" Rodney waved a hand. "This... <i>thing</i>. Where you -- talk about your feelings in a, a forthright and honest way. My one consolation is that you are, if anything, worse at it than I am."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Louder

Rodney marched into John's room without asking, and started to pace back and forth as soon as the door had closed behind him. "Rodney," John said, not bothering to put his book down. "Why don't you come in and make yourself at home?"

"Don't!" said Rodney, stopping in his tracks and holding his hand up like a traffic cop.

John closed his book and raised one eyebrow. "What?"

Rodney opened his mouth, closed it again, frowned, and resumed pacing. John put the book on his bedside table and swung his legs off the bed. Rodney's face had a pinched kind of look on it, the kind he got when he was working himself up to an apology or an admission of failure. John had the sinking feeling Rodney was about to tell him that he'd tried out some brilliant scheme that had turned out to be embarrassingly stupid. Not urgent, or Rodney would be babbling and yelling and snapping his fingers -- no, just something he was going to have to explain to Elizabeth, with John there to share the blame or take the bullet, whichever turned out to be necessary.

John braced himself accordingly, so that when Rodney collapsed into John's one and only chair, scrubbed a hand through his hair and sighed "I am so _bad_ at this. I mean, I am _catastrophically_ bad at this!", it was all he could do not to laugh.

"What's 'this'?" he said instead.

"This!" Rodney waved a hand. "This... _thing_. Where you -- talk about your feelings in a, a forthright and honest way. My one consolation is that you are, if anything, worse at it than I am."

"Hey!"

Rodney looked at him. "Well, you are. Remember when we thought Lorne was dead and he turned out not to be?"

"I had other things on my mind at the time."

Rodney made quotes in the air with his fingers. "'Way to be alive, Lorne!' That's what you said. Those were your _exact words_. And in a way it's kind of comforting to know that I'm not the least emotionally articulate person in Atlantis."

"Rodney, we'd just been captured by the Genii. What was I supposed to do, give the guy a hug?"

"No," Rodney said thoughtfully, "that would have just been awkward, but -- oh, see, now I'm getting distracted." He stood up again and wagged a finger at John. "Look, I have to say this, I have _decided_ to say this, and you are _not_ going to stop me!"

John spread his hands. "Be my guest."

"So don't interrupt, because if you do, I'll never..." Rodney trailed off and stood up, pacing again. "The thing is," he said, "the thing is... you just, I mean, ever since we stepped through that gate it's been one crisis after another, there's just been too much going on and too much work to do to take a second to look around and _think_, and I imagine that's why it's taken me this long to... because we keep winding up in these high-stakes, high-adrenaline situations, so it's natural for feelings to run... well... _high_, and that doesn't have to mean -- except lately it's been so quiet, nothing happening, and knowing my luck that means I'll get a call to the control room before I finish this sentence, but anyway, these are the kinds of circumstances where I would expect my emotional state to simmer down a little, but it hasn't, and..." Rodney stopped at the foot of the bed and looked down at his feet. "And I've never been much of a person for social niceties at the best of times, and I just know that at some incredibly awkward moment this is going to slip out and neither of us will be able to look at each other for weeks and -- It seemed like it would be a better idea to get things out in the open in a, in a controlled manner."

John's eyebrows had been climbing steadily throughout this little speech. He still wasn't entirely sure what Rodney was trying to say, and he was beginning to think that maybe _he_ wasn't quite so bad at talking about his feelings after all, if this was the best Rodney could do.

"The thing is," said Rodney after taking a deep gulping breath, "the fact of the matter is, I love you. And I don't mean in the way a friend loves a friend, I mean full-on, no-holds-barred, romantic, erotic, holding-hands-and-skipping-through-cornfields love. And I don't expect you to reciprocate, because, seriously, I'm not that delusional -- "

John stood up, blood rushing in his ears. "Rodney -- "

"Wait, wait, I'm not finished! I don't want this to spoil our friendship or our ability to work together and I want you to know that I don't expect anything to change, and I know things are probably going to be weird for a while, but I just... thought you might like to know. Because, because even if I'm not the kind of person you could ever... it's still, it's nice, it's nice to..."

John took a step forward. "Rodney -- "

"I would like to know, if it were me. So that's why I -- because I don't expect you to -- "

John grabbed Rodney's face and kissed him, clumsy, fast, awkward, no finesse whatsoever and not even any tongue, and for a second Rodney just stood there, frozen, as if he hadn't just cranked his ribs open to show John his heart; then his hands settled in John's hair and he opened his mouth with a groan.

A long time later, they were lying in a heap on John's bed and John was running a finger down Rodney's spine and idly wondering whether that white patch on the floor was his sock or Rodney's briefs. A thought occurred to him, and he poked Rodney in the temple. "Cornfields?" he said.

Rodney gave a disgruntled huff. "I told you I was bad at this."

"Cornfields, though."

"Oh, shut up! You didn't say a word. Not a _single_ word."

"Actions speak louder," said John, and Rodney twisted in his arms and bit his collarbone, and John heard: _asshole_ and _you're right, but I'll never admit it_, and _yes, yes, yes_.

[end]


End file.
